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“Indiana Jones – The Sonic Adventure Collection” by John Williams

With this set I’m fulfilling the second out of five promises that I’ve teased on social media at new year’s eve. And it’s really great to finally be able to tick this off of my list. Indiana Jones has always been sort of like a holy grail for me and I’ve made a firm commitment to only start working on it, when I felt like having enough inspiration to turn it into something special (at least for me).

It finally came in the form of my friend SonicAdventure, who offered me a collaboration for one of his established Deluxe Editions. Still a little whacked from my previous (and once again sprawling) work on Ready Player One I accepted, partially hoping that a labor effort like this one would bring back some of my sorely missed spirit. And it surely did!

Right before CineMaterial was confronted with takedown requests from Disney and Universal I’ve manged to download all Indy-related material that seemed to be useful and thus had a good foundation to begin with. However, it also meant that there was little to no chance for additional high quality source images and I had to get along with what I had.

I’m dividing this post into five sets. The first four were made by me and the last one was made by my fellow artist tintacle, who already graced my blog with his amazing Ralph McQuarrie Series for the Star Wars original trilogy. For the sake of simplicity, I decided to leave the versions labeled as Deluxe Edition to my friend Sonic and publish the regular versions instead. I hope that is in your interest as well.

Raiders Set
It was only natural to kick into this whole venture with Raiders of the Lost Ark, especially since I already had a Photshop template at hand, thanks to my Stranger Things spoof cover from last year. I eventually ended up rebuilding it from scratch anyway, but at least it got the ball rolling.

Since this set was such a smooth operation, I went on and made somevintagewhitealternates that wonderfully bring out the iconic Raiders/Indy logo. And speaking of logos… I also recreated these (duh!). Of course, with the utmost care for those slightly different colour gradients that were updated on each film.

#1: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Original)

#2: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Custom)

#3: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Custom)

#4: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Custom)

Temple Set
This one was considerably harder to accomplish, due to the limited range of source material. Crystal Skull works pretty flawless here (if you don’t mind the mirroring), but Crusade definitely does not. It falls out of line significantly. The fuzzy white frame was a compromise that I had to make to be able to place the logo alike on all four covers. But overall it’s just not quite right.

I really wish I had matching, gloomy background images for all four scores, but I guess you can’t have everything. I did in fact make darker versions of Raiders and Crusade too, but they just looked too bad and don’t deserve to be part of this collection. Maybe I’ll post them at another time.

#5: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Custom)

#6: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Remake)

#7: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Custom)

#8: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Custom)

Crusade Set
The third set was possibly the most straightforward as I could use all textless posters right out of the box. My only noteworthy task was identifying the additional font on top. For those interested, it’s “Caslon Pro”, but heavily compressed, which was apparently a common technique at the time. Man, these crazy 80’s…

#9: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Custom)

#10: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Custom)

#11: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Remake)

#12: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Custom)

Crystal Skull Set
This one was definitely the set I looked forward to the most. Even though it was the hardest one to accomplish, but I love creative challenges like that. Transforming vertically oriented posters into a square format is always tricky. So I’m thrilled to see the results worked out as good as these.

But those weren’t the only obstacles I had to overcome. There were numerous smaller problems that had to get eliminated on the way. For instance, making sure that there’s enough room for the text in the upper area. Or the correct placement of the bottom logo to keep the “of the” part legible. It’s little things like that that keep me busy for days until I can finally sit back with satisfaction and declare another custom covers series done.

#13: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Custom)

#14: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Custom)

#15: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Custom)

#16: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Remake)

DVD Set
This bonus set consisting of four custom covers was made by tintacle and he generously allowed me to include it on my blog. I initially had plans to make those covers myself, but he already nailed it, so I thought I’d save the trouble and feature his instead.